Archive for June, 2019

RICHARD: Well Pentecost
is one of the Feasts of the Lord, and in every Christians’ favorite book of the
Bible. Leviticus [laughs], you know.

LARRY: [laughing] Yeah; yeah, yeah, yeah.

RICHARD:
But I really. that’s. actually the Book of Leviticus is the mother lode of the
Gospel in what Christians call the Old Testament!

LARRY: Yeah.

RICHARD: If they could get past their fear of these old rituals, the Hebrew
Bible is a picture of a person!

LARRY:
Mm.

RICHARD:
So you’re looking for. you’re looking to find the person in the pictures.

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD:
And so the festivals of the Lord are
really summarized in Leviticus, chapter 23. But anyway the point is these are feasts
of the Lord.

LARRY:
Yes.

RICHARD:
that He gave to the Jewish people, but for all of God’s covenant people to.

LARRY:
Mm.

RICHARD:.
to celebrate and enjoy for all time. So they’re actually pictures of a person.
The Hebrew word, moadim; means a special, set apart time, to meet with God!

LARRY:
Wow.

RICHARD: Well so that’s what they are. Back in the 70s, long before most people (laughing)

who are alive today.

LARRY: (laughing)

RICHARD:
you know, we had this wonderful move of God.

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD:
and we. we. we couldn’t get enough of Jesus.

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD:
So we would. we would invent meetings and organize things, just so we could sit
around together and praise the Lord all day.

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD:
all day; we called them Jesus fests.

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD:
Jesus festivals. The feasts of the Lord, Larry, are Jesus festivals!

LARRY:
Yeah, that’s good.

RICHARD:
Hallelujah!

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD: (laughing)

That’s what they are!

LARRY:
Yeah; yeah.

RICHARD:
So, but it began long before Acts, all the way back in the Book of Exodus!

LARRY:
Wow.

RICHARD:
God came down upon Mount Sinai in the Bible, people know this story. And the
mountain shook, you know, and quaking.

LARRY:
Yes.

RICHARD:
and the fire of God in the smoke! Man, can you imagine being there? And the
people ran to the foot of the mountain to see all this, what’s going on, and
God spoke to the people. But people who are Bible students might remember,
coming out of Egypt, it says it was a mixed multitude.

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD:
So there was all kinds of people coming out of Egypt. It was the ancient
superpower of the world.

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD:
so a lot of people came out with the Hebrews, and they spoke all kind of
languages. So how is God going to say something to these people.

LARRY:
Wow.

RICHARD:
where they can all hear the same thing?

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD:
So the Jewish sages have always taught for centuries that when God spoke the
Commandments to the people, Larry, He spoke to them out of the mountain in
tongues of fire, and they saw and heard the words coming to them in their own
languages! Isn’t that amazing!

LARRY: (claps)

That’s amazing.

RICHARD:
Wow!

LARRY:
I mean that’s like a prophetic picture though.

RICHARD:
It is!

LARRY:
of what we see fulfilled at Pentecost!

RICHARD:
It is. it’s exactly! So they rushed to the mountain; they heard God speak in
these [laughing] tongues of fire, in their own languages. Then Moses got up and
gave his sermons, but it was kind of a disappointment b-because they had been
worshipping this golden calf.

LARRY:
Yeah; yeah.

RICHARD:
and 3,000 people died.

LARRY:
Wow.

RICHARD:
in the–

LARRY:
Oh.

RICHARD:
in the presence of the fire of God. But God spoke all of this, and put it on
stone tablets.

LARRY:
Yes.

RICHARD:
It was a picture. So, now what happened, Larry, is the Prophets said there’s
going to come a time in history when God, Who wrote those those Laws on the
stone tablets, is going to write them on the fleshly tablets of people’s
hearts.

LARRY: (claps)

Yes; yeah.

RICHARD:
Hallelujah! And come inside of us, and upon us, and surround us!

LARRY:
Yes.

RICHARD:
And we’d be enveloped in. in the fire, and power, and Spirit of God!

LARRY:
Yeah.

RICHARD:
So every year they’d come back to Jerusalem. They’re supposed to come very
year. After Passover they’d go home; then they’d come back 50 days later, and
that’s what Pentecost means, you know.

In
the presence of Jehovah, God almighty. He’s Prince of peace. Troubles vanish,
hearts are mended. When we’re in the presence of the King. In the presence of
Jehovah, God almighty, He’s Prince of peace. Troubles vanish, hearts are
mended. When we’re in the presence of the King. Troubles vanish, troubles
vanish, hearts are mended. When we’re in the presence of the King. When we’re
in the presence of the King. (sings in tongues) Surely the presence of the Lord
is in this place. Ha, ha! I can feel His mighty power and His grace. Ah, yeah,
yeah. I can feel the brush of angels’ wings, ah, I see glory on each face.
Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place. Surely the presence of the
Lord is in this place, ah, I can feel His mighty power and His grace. I can
feel the brush of angels’ wings, I (sings in tongues) Surely the presence of
the Lord is in this place. (singing in tongues) Holy–Holy, yeah, yeah,
yeah, –Holy God– Holy– Holy– Holy God.
Hallelujah, He’s holy, He’s holy, Holy God (singing in tongues) Holy– Holy–
Holy God– You’re holy, yes, You’re holy, magnificent God, You
reign forever, Holy You are, Holy You are, Holy You are, sovereign King, Holy– You’re
worthy, magnificent God, (sings in tongues) You’re holy, Lord You’re holy. Holy
One of Yisrael. Mighty You are, mighty
You were, You forevermore shall be. You are holy– You are holy– You are holy–
You are holy– (singing in tongues) –Holy– Whooo– Holy– (singing in tongues) –Whooo!

KHALIDA: There is some people here that God wants you
to step out. You know who you are. I’m not going to– I don’t know your name but
I see one right here in front of me. Right here, stay. You’re stepping out.
Okay, yes. There is people in the back, I’m talking to you way, way, way in the
back. You know who you are. Okay, and I’m sure it’s okay for them to step
forward. You know who you are and God is telling you there is an assignment and
God wants you to be bold today. See, Keith his head is bold. Be like that. All
right? He told me I could do that earlier–– Be bold. The enemy– I see some of
you way in the back, the enemy’s saying “Oh, God is not talking to you, you not
hearing God’s voice, it’s a long way to come to the front.” I’m telling you
right now: Do not miss your appointment, come forward– now! There is a river
here. Anyway when we were worshipping the river was right there. And Keith was
talking about that as we worshiped and we pressed on the river came closer–
Anyway when we were worshipping on the last one– my sister and I, our feet were
cold. And I asked God “why am wearing socks and shoes and my feet are cold?” I
stepped in the RIVER– All right? So this
is your time. If you think it’s really your time and you holding back, God
cannot help you. I’m not being religious. So be bold. And come forward, and
receive it. I coming from a Muslim background where women don’t have voice. And
God saying there is women in this house that today God is giving you a new
song, a new voice!

CHESTER: Let me just
mention that as we minister in the United States we find at least 80% of the
people we minister to having a root of shame and what we call shame-based
personality, giving place to fear, giving place to control. So, you know,
you’re a pretty good-sized group here, but if we take 80% a lot of us probably
need to deal with this. In other nations that have more abandonment in their
culture we find 100% of the people are shame-based. So this is not a little problem,
folks, this is major and the devil uses it to keep us out of our destiny,
because the more shame-based we are the more fear there is. We won’t take risks
and to walk in faith it calls for a life of risk-taking, doesn’t it?

BETSY: Okay, let me
tell you a few of the symptoms. Mine was that I was always apologizing. ‘I am
SO sorry. Please forgive me for breathing your air.’

AUDIENCE: WOW!

CHESTER: She really said
that.

BETSY: I mean I really
apologized about everything. His was perfectionism and always having to be
right.

CHESTER: Oh yeah, I did
things perfectly, you would have been proud to have me [as] your- employee-
yes-

BETSY: But oh my
goodness did it get old quick-

CHESTER: And very tiring,
exhausting.

BETSY: And very tiring
for all of us! And then this performance and victim mentality, and
unworthiness, and anger and lot’s of jealousy. You know when you feel shame you
always feel like somebody else has it better, and so there’s a lot of jealousy
that comes out of that.

CHESTER: Which is by the
way a weapon the devil uses to get one Christian to provide an open door to
attack another Christian. When you and I are jealous of somebody else we are
providing an open door and that’s why a lot of people have problems and they
don’t even know why they’re having it.

BETSY: They found a lot
of back problems connected with being a target of jealousy.

CHESTER: Back problems,
yeah, and financial issues.

BETSY: [agreeing] And
financial issues as well. So, there’s a lot of territorialism. -When you feel shame you don’t feel good
about yourself, then if you have a little thing that you do, you try to hold
onto that to make yourself feel important. ‘I just want you to know that I’M
the one handing out the bulletins. Now you just leave. You’re not handing out
bulletins today. I am!’

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHS IN
AGREEMENT]

CHESTER: And other really
important things- [joking]

BETSY: Okay, I mean our
church is full of the manifestations of shame.

AUDIENCE: Uh huh!

BETSY: And we can have
a shame-based leader and a controlling pastor. Or a controlling leader and a
shame-based congregation. It’s really interesting the mix and match that you
can get when you start to think about how does a stronghold operate.

CHESTER: So the moral of
the story is we’ve need to declare war on shame and get it out of our lives.

AUDIENCE: Amen, yes.

CHESTER: But because we’ve lived with it all our lives
up to this point, I don’t want you to be casual about it or to be naive
thinking well I’ll pray a simple prayer and that takes care of it. This is a
false identity that we have given place to. We take these on as a lie about who
you and I am. And you can always identify false identity ’cause you can use a
statement like ‘I am- afraid- I am- now none of us say ‘controlling’ but we
might say ‘protecting myself all the time.’ If I asked you to raise your hand
and, you know, admit that you’re a controller none of us would do this. One,
’cause we haven’t thought of it that way and Two, because it would stir our
shame if we admitted to it, so I’m not going to ask you to do that. But we’ve
learned pretty much all of us are controllers. Some are nice controllers, you
know, you’re doing it for the benefit of somebody else-

BETSY: I was a very
nice controller.

CHESTER: Betsy, Betsy was very nice, yes. Now this is a little hard because I don’t want you to do something you’re not willing to do or ready to do. But this is warfare so I’d sort of like you to stand up, but if you don’t stand up, which is perfectly okay, then you’ll be shamed because you won’t be joining in to do the warfare, (laughter) so it’s okay to stand up and if you don’t want to do the ministry don’t enter in. Okay? We’ve gotten healed enough now, we don’t need to control other people. So I want you to do what you want to do, you and the Holy Spirit. Okay? We don’t want to in any way to abuse you spiritually or any other way.

BETSY: I just want to
share one or two words of knowledge I had as we were preparing-